CSI: Dark Motives (Nintendo DS) > Reviews (6)

CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) : Dark Motives is a game for the Nintendo DS, based on the television series, and requiring you solve various different cases with logical thought and using various tools to examine the crime scenes.

The game controls can be quite fiddly, giving the appearance that the game is more of a port from the PC versions of the game released a few years ago, rather than the game being re-designed to meet the requirements of the Nintendo DS itself. Using the Nintendo's stylus is very fiddly on occasions, with a lack of thought in my mind being given to the actual playing of the game.

The plot of the game is that there are five different cases which you have to solve, similar to the approach taken by the television series. You use the stylus to find areas of interest, objects, getting samples and the like, to help you solve each individual case. You can use different mechanisms such as fingerprint detectors, UV lights and other devices shown in the television shows.

However, all of these different methods have to be tried, which can soon become quite repetitive, especially with the slightly cumbersome stylus controllers. This repetitive nature of the game, even though there are some small diversions, soon make the game stop being fun to play.

However when playing the game it can be quite enjoyable to solve the mysteries throughout the game, but did abandon the game before completion as the disadvantages just outweighed the enjoyment of playing it. So game play wise I found the game quite clunky and almost irritating.

There is another problem in terms of playing the game, which is that if you miss something near the beginning of the case you may well have to replay the entire case from the start. Replaying cases in this way, in order to make a little more progress, can be quite frustrating and really reduces the pick up and play factor of this game.

The game is currently available, at the time of writing, for 14.05 pounds on Amazon. The game is rated as a 16+ game, so should only be purchased or played by those who are older than this. There are some plot devices which are of a slightly adult nature, and some minor language, but nothing that I would say would cause offence.

Personally this isn't a game that I'd advise you buy, or at least, maybe it's best to purchase the PC version of the game. But enjoyable for a while, so maybe worth a try if you like games of this genre.

(on dooyoo with same user-name)